


Little Details

by kyarorin



Category: Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers: Prime
Genre: Face Painting, Fluff, Gen, Post Predacons Rising
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-05
Updated: 2014-05-05
Packaged: 2018-01-22 00:36:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,153
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1569521
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kyarorin/pseuds/kyarorin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Miko can't tell Vehicons apart, so she rectifies that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Little Details

Tongue sticking out the side of her mouth, Miko hums to herself, hunched over and staring intently at the bright white metal in front of her.

She isn’t the best artist, not by a long shot, but what little skill she does have is good enough for her, and for her victim, sitting patiently in front of her. He hasn’t moved since she’d yelled “I can’t take it anymore! I can’t tell _any_ of you apart!” and cornered him in the newly built rec room, but his wings do occasionally twitch upwards. In humor or irritation she doesn’t know, he hasn’t said anything since he’d been directed to sit down in front of her perch.

Then again, Vehicons never really say anything around the Bots or her unless they absolutely need too. It’s eerie. 

She sits up, shaking out her hand and humming. Maybe not the best artist, and absolutely terrible with crayons, but Miko’s calligraphy and brushwork had gotten her top marks back in Japan.

 “What’s your name?” She asks, looking up at him and grinning.

 He’s looking down at her- or maybe he isn’t, Miko can’t tell with their optical bands and all- and looks up at Bulkhead behind her.

“Go on.” He encourages him, and those wings twitch again.

He tells her some seemingly random combination of letters and numbers and Miko frowns, “That’s not a name, that’s a barcode.”

A few of the other Vehicons in the rec room shift, curious and looking back at each other silently.

“Thundercracker,” says the Seeker, quietly, his gaze going back to Bulkhead. She wishes she could sense fields, because she can’t for the life of her tell if he’s worried about trouble or not.

Licking her lips, Miko tilts her head, “Oh, man, I know the best way to translate that...” Dipping her brush into the water to clean it off she waves him back, yelping when he lifts a hand to his helm “Don’t touch! The paint hasn’t dried yet, sheesh.”

His hand falls and he stills, his blank face looking down as she switches for a larger one, dipping it back into the gold paint.

“That’s looking pretty good, Miko...” Bulkhead murmurs, sounding surprised and she giggles, deftly transcribing the kanji onto the Seeker’s black canopy.

“There! All done!” The teen swishes her brush back into the water, looking back at her art kit. She grins when Bulkhead steps forward with a polished bit of metal, the Seeker tilting his helm from side to side to look at the simplistic gold filigree she’d painstakingly painted along his cheek spars and audials.

The Seeker practically _chirps_ at her in thanks, his wings twitching and fanning outwards as the other Vehicons crowd around the table to look, only to back away when he stands and then move back around him.

A darker frame scoots into the chair Thundercracker just vacated, the double optical-band of a Vehicon miner canted down towards her. “...I’m Strikebreak.”

 

 

* * *

 

  
  


_Something_ has the off-duty Vehicons excited, their voices only hushing when they catch sight of Ultra Magnus. Their optic bands watch him warily, and for a moment he wishes they could speed up their rebuilding; it won’t be until the full medical facility is finished after the barracks and the refinery that they’ll be able to really begin minor, individualistic upgrades for them.

He nods his helm to them politely as he passes, passing another excited group of Vehicons clustered around one of the miners on his way to the rec room.

Ultra Magnus suddenly stops short, his optics blinking as he sees another speed down the hall, hands held in front of himself. The tips of his digits are painted a bright, lurid pink with little hearts and stars deftly painted up his arms and along his cheek.

The Vehicon slows when he catches sight of the Commander, ducking his helm and lowering his hands. “Sir.”

“At ease, soldier.” He murmurs, raising one browplate and passing without further comment. He can hear the Vehicon speed up and away.

The door to the rec room opens to a cacophony of noise, blasting what Miko had called ‘death metal’ straight into his audials, there’s Vehicons everywhere, though only a few are sporting new paint jobs.

“Bulkhead! Shut that down!” He barks, the assault on his audials making him twitch until the music stops. The Vehicons begin to shift and break away from a table in the center of the room, many of them cringing back and quickly beginning to disperse. Miko is there, in the middle, small cans of paint spread out around her with a large cube filled with filth water.

“Aww, come on, Mags! That was the best part of the song!” She drops the brush into the cube, standing and wiping yet another streak of paint across her face, there’s dabs of paint all over the table where she had been sitting.

  _Primus_ , they don’t really have the proper facilities to deal with a human that needs a wash. She’s only supposed to be here for three days, not long enough to actually need bathing, but give Miko credit for finding a way.

 “It’s Mag _nus_ , Miko.”

She makes a face at him, them looking around at the retreating Vehicons in some alarm. “Aww...”

He looks over at one Vehicon, many of them shuffling and looking down.

“Be sure to clean the table when you’re finished, Miko. If you need a solvent to get up the dried paint, please have one of the mechs here do it for you.” The chemicals otherwise would be painfully caustic to her.

She brightens at them, turning and beckoning the mech she had been painting back to her with a broad grin.

 

 

* * *

 

The knock on his door is timid and quiet, Ultra Magnus looking up perfunctorily even as he accesses the camera outside his office.

Ah, one of the Vehicon miners, his helm brightened by neon green stripes as he shuffles nervously in front of Magnus’ door.

“Come in.”

The miner ducks his helm as he enters, letting out a quiet “Sir,” and slowly hands over a datapad.

His browplate raises as he looks the application pulled up on the screen over. “A requisition form.”

The miner nods; most Vehicons are reluctant to talk around the Autobots, outright mute when near Knock Out. He takes a moment to look at the miner, taking in Miko’s painted additions. The katakana on his chest names him as Strikebreak.

The silence stretches between them, before the Vehicon says suddenly, quickly, “Miko’s leaving in a day, sir. And she can’t paint all of us- sir.”

It raises higher as he watches the miner, the mech nervously shifting from pede to pede. Chuckling, Ultra magnus looks down at it and accepts the request for paint and brushes large enough to fit in Cybertronian hands, “I’m certain our human allies will not begrudge us such items, Strikebreak.” 

**Author's Note:**

> Personal headcanon is that Vehicons are sparks fractured from a (often unwilling) donor and placed into frames with severely limited processors to go along with their poorly built frames which give them a dronelike behavior, and to Cybertronians a drone's AI can exhibit complex reactions that humans might mistake for being fully sentient; given time for their spark to heal from the fracturing process and grow they are able to support more complex sensor and processor suites. In the Cons, this usually comes with catching an Officer's attention and being given an upgrade and a name (like Makeshift), otherwise the names they choose for themselves are often kept between Vehicons only.


End file.
